Executive Summary of Web Payments work

It's not done yet, but the Web Payments IG has been working on an
executive summary of an "ideal outcome" wrt. the W3C Web Payments work.
There's enough there that it's worth a read:

https://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/wiki/ExecSummary

Full text below for those that want to comment on this mailing list:

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Intro

   ECommerce is thriving and continues to expand. However
   fragmentation of payment systems is limiting the growth potential
   as are problems -- €”both real and perceived by consumers -- such as
   fraud and usability.

   Because the Web is ubiquitous, strengthening support for Web
   payments has the potential to create new opportunities for
   businesses and consumers. Mobile devices are already transforming
   the industry by supplanting physical payment cards in proximity
   payments, voucher distribution, and identification when people
   authenticate to a scanner, point of sale, or access gate. Although
   we are seeing innovation in mobile payment systems, the lack of
   standards makes it more difficult to adapt to new payment
   approaches or integrate new payment providers. Fragmented
   regulatory environments further complicate the payments landscape.

   To achieve greater interoperability among merchants and their
   customers, payment providers, software vendors, mobile operators,
   and payment networks, the [14]W3C Web Payments Interest Group,
   launched in October 2014, is developing a roadmap for standards to
   improve the interoperability of payments on the Web.

Goals

   Our goals for a more interoperable Web standards framework for
   payments are:

     * Increased user choice. We seek to enable people to pay with
       their preferred payment instruments (that are also accepted by
       merchants) and to increase the choice of payment instruments
       available to users.
     * Improved user experience. We want to improve the user
       experience in a variety of ways. These include reducing the
       need to provide data as part of a transaction (helpful on
       mobile in particular), simplifying payment user interfaces,
       harmonizing checkout experience across ECommerce sites, and
       making it easier to make payments from a wide range of
       devices, such as computers, portable devices, televisions,
       eBooks, and automobiles. Taken together, we expect these
       improvements will lower the rate of "cart abandonment."
     * Greater security. We seek to increase confidence in the Web as
       a platform for conveniently and securely concluding
       transactions. By improving Web security and fostering an
       ecosystem that makes it easy to integrate more secure payment
       instruments, we expect to see a major reduction in payments
       transaction fraud (such as stolen card numbers or compromised
       virtual currency wallets). We are interested in approaches
       (such as tokenization) that reduce the need for customers to
       share sensitive data with merchants or other parties, at the
       same time as we want to make payments a seamless experience
       for all parties.
     * Minimal standardization. We seek to require as little new
       technology and as few standards as possible, in order to
       minimise the barriers for rapid, widespread adoption.
     * Rapid, widespread adoption. The framework must be adopted by a
       significant part of the global market in order to be a viable
       platform for development. Interoperability with existing
       industry standards will play an important role in broad
       adoption. In addition, for global adoption we will need to
       take into account diverse payment preferences (such as credit
       cards, e-cash, electronic direct debit, etc.).
     * Regulatory acceptance. One important aspect of widespread
       adoption is acceptance by many regulatory frameworks around
       the world. For example, It must be possible to report
       legally-required information about transactions above a
       certain value to relevant authorities - although it should be
       possible to conduct a legal, pseudo-anonymous transaction
       without more burden than today. We note that regulators have
       varying approaches in determining what sequence of a payment
       transaction constitutes a contract between buyer and merchant.
     * Innovation. Standards generally lower barriers to entry and
       foster innovation. The framework should enable providers to
       develop new services (e.g., discounts, coupons,
       context-sensitive offers) and customise and extend existing
       services to match their needs on top of standard protocols and
       formats.
     * Lower Costs. Standard APIs and data formats should lower the
       cost of providing and adopting new payment solutions, and in
       changing payment providers.
     * Transparency. The framework should enable the parties in a
       transaction to understand the costs of a transaction (e.g.
       exchange, handling fees, taxes, etc.) and what (personal) data
       is going to be exchanged or was exchanged and created in
       hindsight.
     * Automatability. A standard framework should enable automatic
       payments to be made and understood by individuals and
       organizations, but also the software and devices to which they
       have delegated authority. For instance, it should be possible
       to authorize a car to pay for road tolls and parking up to a
       certain limit without needing constant confirmation.
       Machine-readable data plays a role in automatability.
     * Portability. Users and merchants should be able to port money
       and data easily from one system to another - whether moving a
       list of regular bills to be paid between payment systems, or
       getting cash in exchange for credit in a particular system.
     * Monetization. Web developers will be able to integrate
       payments smoothly into a variety of user experiences on the
       Web, including in-app payments, downloads, and subscriptions.

Benefits for Various Audiences

   Many of the above goals will lead to benefits for a multiple
   audiences, such as greater security and greater interoperability,
   leading to a greater overall volume of payments through the Web.

   Here are a few benefits from various perspectives
   [Editor's note: needs more work].
     * Users. We want to make it much easier to use one's preferred
       payment instruments with any merchant, on any device.
       Standards will give users more options to pay both by
       fostering innovation and by making it easier to adopt a wider
       variety of payment solutions. We anticipate that users will be
       able to make payments more quickly, and more securely. We will
       see greater consistency in ecommerce solutions across
       merchants, platforms, and devices. A standard payments
       framework for the Web will support existing and new payment
       methods.
     * Merchants. Today each merchant must add code to their sites or
       applications for each new payment solution. A user-centric
       payment architecture means that merchants will have to
       implement less, as users access secure payment schemes that
       will work with any site that accepts that scheme. By making
       the payment experience more consistent and easier across
       sites, merchants will improve the customer experience and
       speed up payments. In addition, merchants will be able to
       provide branded value added services such as loyalty coupons
       and special marketing offers that are visible to users as
       payment options. Web payments will enable merchants to reduce
       their own liability by making it less necessary to store
       sensitive or PCI-DSS compliant data.
     * Mobile Operators. Mobile operators will also have new
       opportunities to broaden their customer relationship by
       becoming a payment agent provider. Standards will also
       facilitate carrier billing. Operators will also have new
       opportunities to provide value-added services to mobile users
       (e.g., location-based partnerships) in a way that is scalable
       across merchants.
     * Banks, Card Issuers, and Networks. These financial
       institutions will have new opportunities to strengthen
       relationships with their customers and offer them more
       frequent and safe opportunities to use their payment
       instruments for ECommerce.

Proposed but not agreed yet

   Person-to-person
          A system should enable simple, small payments between two
          individuals, as well as so called "business to consumer"
          transactions. (Question: would our work be useful in
          reducing compliance costs?) If we include this, we should
          be sure to mention that this is one opportunity to provide
          financial services to more people (in all regions of the
          world).

   Convergence between online and brick-and-mortar.
          This is mentioned in charter, and architecture should bear
          this in mind, but it is not the current focus of work.

Topics of interest the group but not first priority

     * Streamlined cross-platform exchanges of value.
     * Making it easier to move value between different networks.

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-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: The Marathonic Dawn of Web Payments
http://manu.sporny.org/2014/dawn-of-web-payments/

Received on Thursday, 12 March 2015 04:15:59 UTC